Big Wins Last Week! And prayers for the future

I want to start off today praising God! He worked through the people in our church this week and we saw a lot of people who are not currently connected to church come for the first time and have a really great experience! Yesterday feels to me like the one day we have most closely connected with our core vision of reaching people who have given up on church. We also had a great youth trip on Saturday! God gave us a couple real wins this week!

Here are the areas I'm praying about this week. I would love if you could join me:

• Easter Season - From here on out, it is full throttle toward Easter! This means prayer, fasting, outreach and planning to serve well all the many guests God will bring to our church in the next month. We are working on a huge Easter Weekend which entails a city-wide Good Friday service with 4 other churches, two Easter egg hunts (Jefferson and McAuliffe elementary - we can serve and connect with the families of 1000 kids that day!), and our Easter Sunday service at church. I'm believing for our weekly church attendance to grow to 110 by the end of the month. We also need to raise about $4000 for the egg hunts. These are big goals. Pray with me to our big God to see them reached.
• Ongoing fund-raising efforts - I'm in conversation with a good # of churches about them helping our church financially. I still have some more to contact and follow up with too. I'm continuing to believe that God's favor will be with me and our church as that process goes on.
• Wisdom and direction from God - I'm about to send out some job applications and resumes this week. I'm just asking God to give me wisdom, favor and direction. This is a real unknown for me, but I trust God above all else.
• The right people on the bus - our leadership team at Freedom Valley has changed some in the recent past and is about to change a lot more in the near future. Quite a few key people are transitioning to the next step in their lives. If I look at it on the surface, it's scary. But I'm looking at it deeper than that. These people moving on is creating tremendous space for new people to step into what God has planned for them. The vision of Freedom Valley is not my plan. It's God's. Please pray with me that I can continue to see God's role in God's plan.

Thank you so much for all your prayers and your friendship!